Set building is one of the many great joys of stop-motion animation, and there are so many ways to go about it. Depending on what you’re making, you could be working with anything from paper and cardboard to wood, clay, plastic… anything, really. Obtaining your materials is one area that can rake up a lot of expenses if you’re not paying attention. Buying all of your materials is one way of going about it, and for very particular projects, this may be the superior route. But, along the sunny streets of Barcelona, it’s easy to find a wide range of materials without spending a cent. Sustainable stop-motion set design in Barcelona is alive and well… for us, at least! There is a great culture throughout Europe of unused furniture and materials being put out for collection on the side of the road. This practice gives people an opportunity to recycle things such as furniture and materials. But best of all, it means an incredible selection things. In our time as animators, we’ve puled off some fascinating sets using found objects from all over the place! In todays post, we’ll take a look at 3 of our favourite found object set solutions.
Starry NIghts
During the creation of Make Do, we built our set almost entirely out of found objects. Because we had decided to work with silicone and polyurethane moulds for our puppet, we were eager to cut down costs wherever possible to reserve our budget. The only items purchased for the film were the main mirror, the board for the mountains, and the fabric for the backdrop. Everything else on the set was created using recycled furniture and other materials from the side of the road. The hardest solution to find for this set was a backdrop for the starry night sky. We found a large piece of black fabric, which we tried bleaching and burning holes in, but it didn’t create the sharp look we were hoping for. After hours of strolling through the streets of Poblenou, we were ready to abandon the whole operation. Suddenly, we spotted a massive cardboard box, assumedly from a fridge… or something like that. We charged across the street, lifting up the box in a state of utter glee. A can of black spray paint and some file-stabs later, and we had an (almost) free night sky floating above our set. This was one of those things we simply could never have created in any other way.
cupboard set
On another production titled, “The Opening,” the streets of Barcelona once again gifted us the perfect means to create our project. The Opening was part of a 24 hour animation competition, which we entered as a group of 9. The film was set in a gallery, which meant we essentially needed to create a room for all of the artwork to hang. This time, we found an Ikea Busunge (children’s wardrobe), which was simply perfect. We removed the doors and lined the walls with white paper, as it was painted blue. The result was a wonderful gallery set, with walls, floors, and a spot above for a light, all pre-fabricated. Finding the wardrobe saved us hours on set-building which, I’m sure you’d imagine, meant a lot on a 24-hour production. That cupboard went on to live a long life as a stop-motion set, and featured in a few more animation challenges after that.
Turn it into a top-down
Last but not least, and perhaps the greatest find we ever came across…. was two metal frame shelves! Now, perhaps that does’t sound so interesting if you still aren’t familiar with top-down tables, but this discovery changed everything. It was the 18th of October 2023, and we had a couple of social media media jobs in the pipeline for a new client. We had elected to shoot using paper cutouts, but were having a near impossible time finding a way of achieving a top down angle, let alone multiple layers of glass. We had a number of glass photo frames we had collected over the years, but alas, nothing to lay them on. It was a Wednesday night with nothing to do. No solutions had been found to the top-down issue, so out we went for a walk. Such is the nature of sustainable stop-motion set building in Barcelona that no sooner had we turned the corner, there stood before us two of the most gloriously perfect metal frames you ever did see. Once again, we flew across the street, bounding joyfully to have finally found a solution to the age old top-down-challenge. Those tables remain with us to this day, and are still in regular use.
That’s a wrap
To end off todays post, we would like to encourage any animators out there to get out into the world and see what materials you can find to build your sets. There are so many amazing things you can do in stop motion with just a little bit of creativity. These are some ways we have fonud to keep animating, even when budgets are tight or non-existent. It is such fun, searching for the things you need and innovating new ways of bringing your world together. So, cheers to the first year of 2024, and let’s get animating! In February, we’ll take a dive into our love affair with our top down tables in an special Valentines Day post (with an an animation to show for it!), since the 30th of February doesn’t exist…
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